> Hi again all,
>
> Why do you think this drive is very very stubborn? I make it online and it
becom
> es offline automatically ... 4 times already ... i ask my hardware
technician to
>  look at it and he replaced the drive with a spare drive ... and asked me to
do
>
>
> rmdev -l rmt2 ----> to make it DEFINED in unix devices
> and then
> mkdev -l rmt2 ----> to make it AVAILABLE again in unix devices
>
> but still the drive goes offline automatically ... oh yeah .. I also have
make i
> t path and drive online again and again ... just like what the log below
says ..
> . does anyone have any idea what is going on with this drive ... and can
anyone
> suggest me what to do with this drive ... please don't tell me to throw this
dri
> ve to the river ... ! hhehehehehe ...
>
> 11/29/04 14:16:45     ANR8848W Drive DRIVE3 of library 3494LIB is
inaccessible;
>
>                        server has begun polling drive.

>
> 11/29/04 14:37:47     ANR8471E Server no longer polling drive DRIVE3 in
library
>
>                        3494LIB - path /dev/rmt2 will be marked off-line.

>
> 11/29/04 14:37:47     ANR8873E The path from source ADSM to destination
DRIVE3
>
>                        (/dev/rmt2) is taken offline.

We recently had a similar problem with our zSeries Linux server. It turned
out not to be a drive problem as such. Mount requests sent to the 3494
library manager include a drive identifier based on the hardware serial
number of the controller. The mechanism by which the library manager
corelates the drive identifiers with physical locations in the library
depends on RS-422 (a relative of the more familiar RS-232 protocol)
connections from the library manager to the drives. In our case, the
errors we saw were traced to lack of RS-422 connectivity between the
library manager and the drive. The Field Engineer checked for
installation problems such as loose plugs and then ordered replacements
for both the RS-422 cable and the library manager board it was plugged
into. Once the replacements arrived he was able to fix the problem
almost immediately. I don't know which component turned out to be the
culprit.

You might want to try using the mtlib command to mount a tape. When I
did this, the attempt failed, but the resulting error message gave a
better idea of the nature of the problem than the corresponding TSM
messages.